


felled by you, held by you

by lonelyghosts



Series: adventures in quadrants [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Autistic Character, Character Death, Crushes, F/F, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, a little bit of karkat bashing, i promise i love karkat! hes just. awful to nepeta, some minor nepkat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-07 02:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: It's kind of impossible to not wax red, even if it's just a little, for Feferi Peixes.





	felled by you, held by you

**Author's Note:**

> tws: descriptions of gore, child abuse, child death, ableism, etc.

Aradia wants to not like Feferi. She really does.

There are so many reasons not to indulge in her dumb crush. For one, Feferi is a highblood, and even though she's not like Equius or Eridan- condescending and rude or outright hateful to the point that Aradia doesn't feel safe around him- she's never going to really understand what being a lowblood is like. She wants to 'redefine' culling to mean taking care of others, which is condescending in its own right. And she's utterly oblivious- she brings Eridan to games and hang-outs and acts confused and upset when the rest of them leave- although that doesn't happen anymore. She's heard they broke up- but Aradia supposes even Feferi, with her boundless positivity, would get tired of him, especially when his goals directly oppose hers. 

Feferi is naive and doesn't understand that her empire will never work. She doesn't  _get_ that Alternia is unsalvageable. She's bubbly and sweet and nice and full of -EN--ERGY! and Aradia is so, so tired now. She can hear the voices of the dead in her ears, and they whisper it will all be over soon, and she wants to just... let go. To just stop. She's been working so hard for so long.

But Feferi is kind, and beautiful, and never makes Aradia feel lesser for being a rustblood, and she wept over Aradia's death when she heard, and she sends Aradia nice messages full of heart emojis and-

She wants to believe in the world that Feferi wants to build. She wants to believe that things will get better. She wants to believe in Feferi when she says that someday, lowbloods will be respected and cared about and no one will be tossed out or discarded. 

She wants to believe in Feferi. Some days, she even does.

* * *

 Sollux isn't the kind of boy that girls like Feferi wax red for. Maybe black or even a misguided, condescending pale, but never red. 

Normally he wouldn't even care about girls like Feferi, but she smiles and the world lights up. She leans over his shoulder and asks him what he's coding and actually listens to what he's saying, and she fights by his side in the midst of battle, splashed with blood, and he can't help but feel his bloodpusher stutter and turn red in his chest for her.

It doesn't matter how much he likes her. He's not that kind of boy- he's no prince. He'd never be able to stand by her side on Alternia, if they were to really pursue this back home. Feferi would never be allowed to look at him, let alone speak to him. He'd be culled for even suggesting the Empress would want a quadrant-bearer like him. He'd never be that kind of boy.

Feferi doesn't see it that way, though. He says stuff like that to her sometimes and she pats his arm, tells him that Alternia is gone and the two of us are N-EV--ER going back! And w)(y does it matter, anyways, w)(at the old Alternia would )(ave t)(ought aboat us? T)(ey're naut )(ere. T)(ey don't get to decide w)(at I do!

Usually those conversations end in kissing, and Sollux forgets his worries in her mouth. 

* * *

Nepeta feels like she's doomed to this. Here, standing alone in her room on this doomed meteor, thinking: please. Please love me back.

She is meant to fall for people like them, untouchable and shining and bright. Karkat might not see himself the way she sees him, but he speaks truth in between curses. She wants him to turn soft for her. Nepeta is maybe small and twitchy and feels safer when her face is covered in the blood of the beasts she's slaughtered, but she has eyes to see with and she uses them, and she sees Karkat like this: boy with a burden, boy feeling scared, boy who wants to lead them all to victory. Boy who wants to be good, even if he's not good at being good.

Nepeta knows the feeling of wanting to be good. Of wanting to be something more than you are. It's why it hurts so much when Karkat calls her an autistic catgirl in a cave. It's true, and that's why it hurts- she doesn't want to be strange and weird and half-feral. She wants to be good. 

Feferi is an entirely different story.

When Nepeta first heard from Equius that his neighbor Vriska was in spades with a violetblood who was in diamonds with the Heiress, she was astonished! She wondered what Feferi Peixes was like and pictured her tall and dark and thin, with long hair and a presence that made you want to start bowing. Intimidating and frightening and really really pretty, just the Empress on the newsfeeds. Imperial, demanding, with no time for silly olivebloods and their roleplaying and shipping charts.

Feferi was not like that at all. She popped into Nepeta's inbox one day saying that she'd got ahold of her chumhandle from Terezi and had heard that Nepeta was a really good roleplayer, and Feferi was kind of new to roleplaying herself! Vriska and Terezi and even Aradia's roleplaying was a little too  _violent_ for her but Nepeta's was supposed to be a lot less so, so did she maybe want to RP together?

Nepeta said yes.

Everything she'd ever thought about Feferi was wrong, anyways. Feferi was kind and sweet and thought all kinds of strange things about culling and history. It was refreshing to RP with someone who was kind, and didn't make everything about killing other people. Terezi was fun, but her games often ended with blood, and that got boring and upsetting after a while. 

When they first met in person, Feferi didn't look like her dancestor, anyways. She was short, and chubby, and wore goggles. "For my fis)(-ion!" she said when asked. "It's a s)(ad bit less s)(ark t)(an most trolls', so I wear t)(ese!" She's smaller and less regal, but she's still beautiful and just as kind as she is in her RPs, and she's just as intimidating as Nepeta imagines the Condesce would be, if not more, because Nepeta can't help but blush and stutter a little around her. Feferi is one of her best friends, and Nepeta can't help the way she feels, which is very very red.

And for a moment Nepeta can almost see a future where Feferi kisses her in the common room and asks her to 'cuttle wit)( me?'; they roleplay together and have fun and all their RPs end with Nepeta's catsona purring into Feferi's cuttlefishsona's mouth. Fef's RP page says 'R-ELATION-SHIP status: TAK-EN buoy my gillfriend N-EP--ETA!' and Nepeta's RP page says ':33< relationship status: taken by a purretty catfish named feferi!' They smile together and play together and Equius brags about how "My moirail is in a flushed relationship with the Heiress. What's yours doing?" and Nepeta blushes and tells Equius to knock it off, okay-

The future stretches out before her and Nepeta knows it is impossible.

Feferi is kind, and sweet, and helps people when they ask, and she's brave. She never gives up. Nepeta knows what she is- strange, and half-feral, and weird. Unable to make eye contact. Twitchy and stimmy and odd. Feferi would never like a girl like Nepeta, and it's pointless to dream. 

* * *

Vriska learns about Eridan's moirail and is immediately intrigued. 

Here is another girl just like Vriska herself- a killer, a hunter, a girl with a legacy to her name. Someone who can commiserate. Someone who knows what it's like to have blood on her hands, the justification, the loneliness, the  _fear_ -

Not that Vriska is scared of her lusus! She's a Serket, after all, and Serkets don't _get_ scared! Feeding her lusus is just a bit of a burden, that's all. A heavy one, too. Sometimes Vriska just wants to feel understood by someone who  _gets_ it. After all, it's hard growing up. It's hard, and nobody understands.

But maybe Feferi will. 

Vriska pulls some strings with a couple of highbloods she knows but none of them know Feferi's chumphandle, and she's forced to go to the source. She hates owing Eridan anything, but this is important to her. So she cajoles and needles and plies Eridan with doomsday device blueprints till he gives up the Heiress's chumphandle. She sends Feferi a message, and they start talking, and that's when Vriska learns the worst thing of all. 

Feferi is actually  _nice_.

The little princess under the sea who kills lusii to keep the planet alive and has the blood of countless wrigglers left behind on her hands; she's  _nice_. Vriska can hardly believe it. Feferi is kind and sweet and bubbly and full of  -ENT)(USIASM! She talks about history and theory and mentions that she's been studying for w)(en I c)(allenge the -EMPRESS, and t)(ere's just so muc)( that I )(ave to c)(ange in orca to create a B-ETTA WORLD!

Feferi has dreams, and ideals, and she is full of passion about all the wrongs she sees on Alternia. She gets really excited about it, too, absolutely gushing over the books she's read and the plans she has for the new world she'll be creating when she's old enough. Feferi talks about the Testament of the Signless and Collected Letters of Revolution and the Lowblood's Manifesto with the enthusiasm that most wrigglers save for toys and FLARP wins.

Vriska is abruptly reminded of the time that she went over to Aradia's hive and met her lusus. She'd been so shocked that Aradia was allowed to talk back and be rude and talk about her day, that she didn't slink around her hive worrying about if Ramdad would hear her. Vriska feels just as viscerally confused now as Feferi talks about hemoequality and the redefining of culling, thrust into something alien and strange.

"It's just naut rig)(t!" Feferi exclaims over Trollian, her purple text scrolling across the husktop screen like an accusation, and Vriska panics and makes a hurried excuse for leaving before closing the chat window because- it's not supposed to be like this. 

Feferi has goals and ideals and dreams. She looks at the world and sees potential, and all Vriska can see is burning, is doom, is the sea of what she has to become, the terrifying burden of what she has to live up to.

It's different, then. Or if it isn't, then evidently Vriska's just not as strong. Feferi can choose her own path, her own walkway, her own Empire to build and her own destiny to fulfill. Maybe it's not the same for Vriska because she's not a fuschiablood- Feferi will never overthrow her hemosister through imitation, and anyways it's not like Mindfang is alive, so there's that too. But there's still the lusus issue between them, and Feferi positively gushes about Gl'bgolyb over Trollian, which is- weird, for one, because it's really strange to hear that the gigantic monster that could kill their entire race with a single raised voice R-EELY LOV-ES )(-EAD SCRITC)(--ES! but also because Feferi's relationship with her lusus seems to be exactly like Aradia's.

Vriska knows that her relationship with her lusus is different. That's obvious. No one else has a spider that can read their mind and who demands the deaths of thousands so that she can feed. But she'd thought maybe-

No. It never works like that. She's exactly what the spider in her basement says- the only one who can handle this, and the only one who is awful enough to incur such a responsibility. 

There's no such thing as pity for girls like Vriska Serket, she tells herself. That's just the way it is.

* * *

Feferi is fascinated by the Jade girl. Who wouldn't be? 

The humans are intriguing enough on their own. It's so strange and so interesting and so lovely, so-  _validating_ to see a world that doesn't function based off murder and death. Proof that if she'd lived, if they hadn't all played the Game, if she'd managed, somehow, to kill the Condesce, the world she would've built could have worked.

Feferi thinks that she would've been a good human, if she had the opportunity. 

All of them are strange and interesting in their own way. Rose Lalonde is pretentious and talks big but Feferi knows that she's got no idea of what she's messing with- she thinks that the Game is something that can be played with, can be toyed with like a child, but Feferi is dead and she's seen more than Rose Lalonde, Seer of Light that she is, has. 

This 'Game' that they're playing- if it can still be called a game- will not tolerate Rose Lalonde's meddling. Just as it did not tolerate Eridan killing his consorts, just as it did not tolerate their attempts at winning that were borne out of cheats and unfair plays. Feferi doesn't plan on being around when it backfires on Rose. She knows about Doc Scratch and his underhanded schemes from what little she needled out of Terezi and Vriska, and what Rose is going to do will end in the horrorterrors feeding on her soul. It's not going to be pretty, either, Feferi's seen what going grimdark is like! Feferi's own deal with them was hard-won and she knows they still hunger for her, are still enraged that she managed to slip out untainted by their teething tentacles. She's not planning on going anywhere near them anytime soon.

Dave Strider, for his part, is a mess. Feferi knows his type: he reminds her of Vriska, a little bit, forever determined to come off as cool, as good, as perfectly fine and okay with what's happening, or, in Dave's case, what happened to him. He is an expert at pretending, but Feferi isn't blind- she's seen the dreambubble memories, the rooftop strifes. Gl'bgolyb was hard to deal with, sometimes, with her persistent hunger and her attempts at soothing that mostly hurt Feferi's ears, but she never ever hurt Feferi. Not on purpose. 

He's not the same as Vriska, though. Where Vriska is desperate to be a hero, pulling all strings towards her fumbling grasp in an attempt to be loved, Dave is perpetually ducking out from the spotlight, determined to avoid fights and metal and the splash of blood. Feferi admires that! But it's not interesting, it's nothing she hasn't seen before, and anyways Terezi occupies most of his time. She's not one to edge in on another troll's territory. 

John Egbert is mostly confusing. Feferi looks at him and is struck dumb by how  _soft_ this boy is, sweet and trusting and blind to the dangers of the world around him. Terezi offers him a quick way to the end- one that's  _blatantly_ a trick- and he takes it. Feferi giggles at how stupid he is! 

But there is an element of fascination there, too. Feferi can't  _imagine_ his life, the gentleness of it; no hungry lusus, no fear, no burden. She can't imagine growing up like that, entirely untouched by the matters of blood and killing and orphaning. But that too is something that does not endear him to her.

The weight of having another troll pinned under a trident in your hand, the twist of a neck breaking abruptly in the fist, the whirlwind of fighting for survival, the satisfaction of a cull. Feferi was removed for much of it, being tyrian- she knows that she will never truly understand Nepeta in her cave, blood on the walls, taking Equius's color as protection against the more opportunistic FLARPers or cullhunters. She will never understand the way Aradia shies away from her and Eridan and Gamzee and highbloods in general; she will never know Vriska fighting tooth and nail and claw to feed her awful Spidermother. But Feferi has lived among them, and she is a killer too. John Egbert will never understand these things.

When she was alive, Feferi saw Vriska bent over her computer, basking in John's casual affection, and wanted to tell her: he does not understand us. He can't. He won't forgive you, and he won't love you either. John Egbert's ignorance is not a replacement for Terezi's forgiveness. There is a difference between knowing and loving the bits of someone that they share with you and knowing and loving all of them. You know this, too, Vriska, or you'd tell him the truth. 

Feferi didn't say anything, of course. It wasn't her business what Vriska did with her love life, and Vriska had a tendency to lash out when confronted on... well, anything. Vriska lashing out tended to end with people dead, also, and Feferi valued her life. 

But Jade Harley was different, fascinating in all the best ways.

Here was a girl with nimble fingers and a thousand talents, living with a deceptively normal lusus that hid all the monstrosities that Gl'bgolyb displayed proudly. Secret-keeper, future-seer, Feferi had been drawn to her immediately, and she'd watched Jade Harley from the dreambubbles with a single-minded determination.

Jade laughs and drops emojis in her pesterlogs and Feferi sees this girl for whom survival has become ingrained in her DNA. Jade Harley holds guns the way that Rose Lalonde holds a pair of knitting needles. Her fingers don't tremble on the trigger. There is no room for hesitation here. 

This girl has math written in her fingertips. The smudging of ink as Jade goes over calculations. The economy of survival, if I save the parts then I can use them when there's a real emergency. Feferi knows these calculations, remembers preserving the bodies of lusii killed too early so if the hunt went dry Gl'bgolyb would not go hungry. This is something they share, the knowledge of the sharp edge of addition and substraction of survival. 

There is an element of wishing to her redness for this human girl, too. She wants this, too, the softness of the bond between Jade and her lusii; the guardian-god-dog who crackles radioactive electric green is so gentle with his charge. Doesn't ask for anything, only the knowledge of Jade's safety. Feferi loved her lusus, she did, really, but she was a child trying to protect an entire civilization through cajoling and murder and satisfied hunger. It would've been nice to have a parent she wasn't on some level afraid of. 

It's irrational to flush for her. Jade has never met her, and she's never really met Jade, but Feferi is so lonely out here and Jade is new and exciting and yet familiar in all the best ways. Feferi is only a troll, after all, and it's easier to look at Jade than at the others she's loved and lost over the sweeps.

She can't see an Eridan, alpha or doomed or whatever, without thinking of Sollux, bleeding golden. Without thinking of him following her on the meteor pleading and cajoling and finally yelling at her because she _dared_ to break up with him, dared to have feelings for Sollux and not for him. Feferi hears a wavy accent slurring w's and v's and thinks of white wands and the shocking pain in her stomach. He was her friend and he killed her. 

In turn she can't see a Sollux without thinking of him against the wall, gold dripping from his eyes and nose and mouth, can't see a Kanaya without seeing the blast of white and hearing the awful, awful noise that flesh makes when it's ripped apart, the choked noise she made before slumping to the floor. She looks at Nepetas and sees the body that Gamzee left behind, the mewling whimpering cries that Nepeta made as her bones broke and tore and snapped, sees Equius and hears the slow wheeze of choking. Vriska makes her think of Tavros falling soundlessly down into the dark. It hurts to look at the way that she and her comrades failed. 

She watches the humans instead. It's easier.

Jade dreams and leaves cryptic hints and plays the guitar and when Jade enters the dreambubbles for the first time, Feferi can't help it. These dreambubbles are her creations, brought to life out of her need, and Jade is so confused, having been awake on Prospit for years. Those golden towers were just as much a home to her as the island. Feferi guided her through the fall of Prospit, explained what had happened. Now she had more explaining to do. Just because she was dead didn't mean she'd give up on her job!

The dream is an old memory of Jade's, one before the Game had even started. Feferi introduces herself again, allows Jade to remember the truth- remember what's happened- and then they chat about technology a little before Jade starts to ask questions.

"are you asleep too?" Jade types, and Feferi laughs a little because she might be, in some senses of the word! But no, not really. She moves closer to Jade on the bed, hugs the robot in her hands. 

"Nope!" she replies. "I woke up from my nap a while ago. Remember how I woke up and then messaged you? You had just had a bad dream!

She pats Jade's arm, eyes closed, in a gesture of reassurance. "I told you there was nothing to be scared of. Which there isn't!" She glances back up at Jade, whose expression is twisting slowly into confusion. She's forgotten the keyboard entirely, looking Feferi in the face; the strangeness of this dreambubble is slowly starting to dawn on her. She's realized the strangeness of this memory, the way it's diverged, and her brown furrows in that cute little way she has, scrunching her nose up. Feferi thinks it's positively adorabubble!

"oh yeah..." Jade trails off, confusion evident. She peers down at Feferi and blinks a couple times before she continues on. Something in Feferi's stomach swoops with dread. "i do remember that, but then why are you here?"

Feferi sighs. This, she knows, is where their brief friendship ends. Jade is afraid of these new dreams, and Feferi doesn't want to lie to her. She loves this girl, and it's sad that they'll never get the ability to bridge the space between them. Jade doesn't know her at all, and Feferi doesn't _really_ know her, not in the ways that she'd like to. The only ways she gets to know this girl is through the soft movement of dreams, and she can't stay in one place long. There are things she has to do.

 _I'll never forget you, Jade Harley,_ Feferi vows. _Not for as long as I persist in death._

Then she smiles her signature sharktooth grin down at this lovely human being and tilts her head in a semblance of gentle concern. Feferi's never been particularly patient. Eridan squeezed all of that out of her. "Because, stupid," she says, voice as kind as she can make it. "I'M D-----EAD!"

Jade screams and wakes up, and Feferi watches from above. There goes the little human, her favorite little angelfish, setting out to continue her quest, to save her session.

And Feferi? Well. Feferi has her own job to do.


End file.
